Aaron: Has the ground plan changed from the production at Yale?


Anne: Generally, no. We did some maneuvering to put it in this space. What I like about it is that in the first production, we could see outside the apartment, we could see above the apartment, and the new design is more claustrophobic. We’re just seeing what the characters can see. We don’t have any more information than they do, really, visually, so that’s interesting to me. But the layout is essentially the same, I think the dimensions have slightly shiſted.


Aaron: What about the political resonances of the play? I’d love to hear you talk in more detail about the political side of this piece.


Amy: Tere are at least two different cultures being represented onstage. Abby and Zack are Americans living a brief expatriate existence in Paris. Alioune was born in Senegal and Amina’s parents were born in Senegal. Tey have very different approaches to adult life. Amina and Alioune have concrete goals for themselves, concrete ideas about what it means to live a meaningful adult life, including work and raising a family. Abby and Zack have different ideas that have to do with fulfillment and self- actualization and happiness and these Western concepts of being exceptional. Te play is interested in the clash of these two very different approaches. Aſter the last production, somebody said that it was an “End of Empire” play. Maybe that’s overstating it, but we are at a unique American moment; it feels precarious and perched on the edge of collapse. Tis play is tip-toeing up to that.


Anne: I like when the last scene reorients your perspective on a play, and that’s why I like that Amy leaves us with Alioune and Amina at the end of Belleville. I think there’s something about having them be the last people we see on stage as sort of a reminder that this is their home. Te Americans are visitors.


Belleville Paris, France


Amy: I was first working on this play in 2007-2008, and I don’t remember what the exact chronology was, but there was the Bernie Madoff scandal and the collapse of the housing bubble, so at the time, I was partly writing about a different kind of fiction-making and myth-making that was happening in America financially. Tere was the story we were all telling ourselves about how much money we had and where we were positioned as a culture, and then the reality that was starting to become exposed.


Aaron: Anne, as a director, how do you balance the thriller genre with the more political themes of the play?


Belleville Paris, France


Anne: It’s interesting, because I’m remembering our initial conversations about the relationship between the political angle of the piece and the suspense angle: How do the two influence each other? Do they influence each


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